


Have No Fear

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Boston Bombing, F/M, Post - Season 2, Rough Sex, Season 3 Spoilers, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 04:14:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2414564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Unflinchingly, hour after hour, they barely react to the news coming down from Boston, and Will doesn’t understand. Because he keeps flipping out, and most he can discern from Mac is a subtle pinching of her brows as she goes about waiting for him to stop yelling, or is put on hold with Maggie and Elliot, or learns yet another thing about the bombing suspects.</i> Will and Mac finally go home after the bombing, and Mac decompresses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have No Fear

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Inspired by the newest trailer from HBO. We see Will losing his shit like he hasn't since the second episode, and Mac making her anxious face that hasn't appeared since Brian Brenner was writing an article on _News Night_ so I'm choosing to interpret things this way. Minor spoilers for Season 3, but nothing that wasn't in the trailer or hasn't happened in real life. Warnings for graphic depictions of sex and allusions to the events of the bombing. 
> 
> This can be blamed on the usual suspects: Meg, Clare, Emily, and Lisa. Thanks to Pippa for helping me find an ending. And of course, kudos to the anon who demanded porn in the immediate aftermath of us getting 20 frames of Will touching Mac's back.
> 
> Title vaguely taken from "Words Are Weapons" by Birdy, for the obvious reasons.

He doesn’t understand how she and Jim are so calm. Understands, of course, that they spent twenty-six months in various combat zones, understands that collectively they’ve been shot, stabbed, gassed, and blown up. Unflinchingly, hour after hour, they barely react to the news coming down from Boston, and Will doesn’t understand. Because he keeps flipping out, and most he can discern from Mac is a subtle pinching of her brows as she goes about waiting for him to stop yelling, or is put on hold with Maggie and Elliot, or learns yet another thing about the bombing suspects.

“How the _fuck_ are you so calm right now?” Flippant, he asks, jamming his hands onto his hips and turning to where Mac is seated at the table in his office absently highlighting lines in a wire report.

He spent seventeen hours in the chair on 9/11, and two in the newsroom before that. How is _he_ freaking out right now?

She sighs, finishing whatever she’s reading.

“If you want not-calm just wait until this is all over.”

Her voice is sardonic, self-deprecating, and he doesn’t entirely know what to make of it and MacKenzie doesn’t elucidate any further. Will would interrogate her further, but he hasn’t slept in two days and she’s fine _right now_ , so he promises himself to ask her later, once the bomber is caught and the hysteria is over.

 

* * *

 

But he forgets to ask. Forgets, or is too overwhelmed when it’s finally over on Saturday night—when it finishes in the middle of broadcast with Dzhokhar Tsarnev getting captured during the E block—to remember that Mac’s calm is a flimsy fallacy. He knows this, he’s been through Genoa and half a dozen of the other with her, but it’s too easy to grab her and kiss her, apologizing for how unbearable he’s been the past four days.

“I want to go home,” she moans, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest.

He kisses the top of her head, rubs his palms up and down her arms.

“We can do that,” he laughs, squeezing his eyes shut so tightly that lights begin to erupt behind his vision. It feels surreal, and bubbly, and he’s lightheaded and just wants to get the fuck out of the building, finally.

When they’re in the cab on their way home he half-remembers, because her nails are digging into his forearm where their arms are twined together. When he looks at her, she’s staring straight ahead, the muscles of her jaw working as her teeth clench and release, clench and release.

“Honey?” he murmurs close to her hairline.

Her answer is a kiss, desperate and unyielding. And he’s relieved—the past few days he’s been by turns angry and irate and unreasonable, often directly to her, and occasionally without cause. Exhaling raggedly, she turns into him, lets him frame her face with his hands and trace her bottom lip with his tongue.

The driver’s probably seen more, albeit from people with less celebrity, but Will doesn’t push it further than that.

Not that it stops MacKenzie from pushing herself against him for a tighter fit, or from running her hands over the slope of his shoulders, down his chest, before planting them on his thighs. By the time they’re in the west twenties the idea that they’re going to do anything but fall into bed together as soon as they get home in unconscionable; he lets her feel him up in the back of the cab. It’s nothing they haven’t done before (although usually with considerably higher alcohol content in their systems) and beyond that, the only thought he can scrounge up with her thumbs pressing in closer the zipper on his trousers is _thank god she doesn’t hate me after this week._

It’s not until they’re in the well-lit elevator of their apartment building that he notices the manic glint in her eyes.

But even still, that’s not all that uncommon from Mac.

She’s neurotic, and he loves her for it.

“I just want to forget,” she mumbles as soon as they’re in their foyer, wrapping her fingers around the lapels of his jacket.

“I can help with that,” he replies, the words barely escaping his mouth before she launches herself up at him, slanting their mouths together and steering them in the general direction of their bedroom. Once it becomes apparent that he can manage navigating his way there on his own her she releases his jacket and starts doing her best to rid him of it, and then his shirt, his belt.

Her attitude towards undressing him is deceptively perfunctory, but he doesn’t realize what’s happening until he feels that Mac’s hands, untucking his undershirt from his pants, are trembling.

Slower, he thinks then.

Even if Mac is trying to use him instead of an Ambien, this should be slower.

She has to be as exhausted, if not more so, than he is, and even if she’s handled the bombing better than he has. _Experience_ was the only explanation he wound up getting out of her. _I have experience,_ he countered, and she’d rolled her eyes and gotten back on the phone with Maggie, who was finally safe in the lobby of her hotel with Elliot.

Gently as possible, he pulls their mouths apart and frames her face with his hands, stroking the pads of his thumbs over her cheekbones.

Startled, her eyes blink open and her hands freeze at his waist, until slowly, with care, he starts kissing her again. He decides it’s his turn to undress her. It is, after all, the least he can do after being such an asshole to her.

Fanning his fingers out over her lower back he pulls her blouse out from her skirt before undoing the zipper and button; he sends the garment to puddle on the floor at her ankles. Next he blindly feels between them for the impractically dainty buttons on her blouse, plucking them apart one by one until he can courier that to the floor, too, the satin fluttering quietly as it drops, and she’s shivering by the time his fingers trace the lines of lace trimming her panties.

They’re both surprised when the backs of her knees hit the side of the mattress. Both briefly startled, their mouths open wider, deepening their kiss. He exhales raggedly through his nose, sinking his hands into her hair before laying her on top of the duvet and following her down onto the bed. He hears Mac’s shoes hit the hardwood floor, and a moment later she’s moving them to lie closer to the center.

“Like this?” Will asks, doing his best to toe off his shoes and socks.

Not that he doesn’t like this, just that Mac is usually the preferred one to be on top.

Biting her lip, she stiltedly nods, eyes casting downwards when she props herself up onto her elbows to let him unclasp her bra. “Yeah, I wanna—” She says as he works the straps down her arms. And then stops, shakes her head, and tries again. “I just—”

“Want to forget that this week happened?” he offers, ducking his head to kiss her neck.

Mac shifts under him, getting more comfortable. “It was a little too like other weeks I’ve had,” she explains with indifference, pushing his pants and boxers down his hips as far as she can before catching the waistband with her toes to bring them the rest of the way down to his ankles.

“And now we’re home,” he says, lowering his voice.

Her skin is warm, and he reacquaints himself with the curve of her waist and hips and thighs while tugging her panties down and off.

“Yes,” Mac hisses out when he brings his mouth back to her throat to trace her carotid with his tongue. “And now can we—”

Scraping his teeth over her pulse, he feels more than hears her gasp.

Mac doesn’t want slow. She’s humored him to this point, and he can tell that humoring was the extent of it when she scratches her nails down his back and turns her head to bite his jaw. But if it’s what she wants, he thinks, raking his teeth in a line down the column of her neck before turning them into the juncture of her shoulder. Her responding moan is loud, her hips flexing up against his when he sucks what he knows will be a mark into her skin.

It escalates, rapidly, and he encourages it along, wrapping her legs around his hips and filling his palms with her breasts as he sets to making her moan by sinking his teeth into the skin stretching over her lithe shoulders and collarbones. If it’s what she wants, she’ll be stuck buttoning her blouses up all the way for weeks, when he usually sticks to leaving bites and nips to the insides of her thighs, the sides of her breasts, places that are just for the two of them. But she wants this, her moans and cries vibrating under his lips, so he keeps going.

Not that Mac isn’t as giving as good as she’s getting, scoring his back with her nails and giving him marks he’ll have to endure hair and makeup giggling over before reaching between them to wrap a hand around his erection.

Immediately, his arousal surges, and he shifts his attention from her neck to her breasts.

"Will," she whimpers, hitching a leg up higher to wrap around his waist, trying to find the right angle, and moans in appreciation when he pistons his weight to pin her tightly to the bed. “I thought you were going to _help me_.”

He laughs, breath hot on her skin, and he moves one of his hands between her thighs.

“I am.” His thumb pulls her folds taut, and he rubs tight circles into the bundle of nerves at the crux of her legs and she keens, head knocking back. “But if I’m going to do this right,” his teeth tug gently at a nipple, his voice drops an octave, and he notices how he’s making her squirm, “then I want you _ready_ for it.”

“I _am_ ready,” she tells him breathlessly, and then roughly flips them over.

It’s not even then that he remembers, asking, “I thought you wanted to—?”

He’s confused, but pliant to her needs, doing his best to keep up when she starts riding his hand. She’s ready, in the basest biological sense—he can feel her wetness against his fingers—but the shape of the manic gleam in her eye has sharpened, and he’s no longer convinced that a round of athletic sex is all Mac needs to decompress.

“Mac—MacKenzie.”

If she looks him in the eyes, and he knows that she’s fine, then—shaking her head, she squeezes her eyes tightly shut.

“MacKenzie, sweetheart, not that I’m not thoroughly—open your eyes?” he asks, not quite begging, but quite tempted to take his hand out from between them to hold her face to level with his. Because Mac doesn’t do this, she doesn’t shut him out during sex.

 _That_ is when he remembers.

 _Just wait until this is all over_.

“MacKenzie, love,” he tries again, reaching up with a hand to cup her cheek.

And she breaks, rolling off of him onto her back, immediately covering her hands with her face. “Fuck,” she chants quietly, over and over again, and it takes him no time at all to hear that she’s crying.

“Honey—”

Taking her hands off her face seems like it would be a bad idea, so what he does do is gather her into his arms, easing them both onto their sides. It’s awkward, with her forearms pressed against his chest, his fingers covered in her arousal, his erection pushed up against her thigh, and he has no idea what to say that could help her, just keeps one arm wrapped around her waist, the other cradling her head where she’s quietly crying into his shoulder.

But he feels like he should say _something,_ and winds up murmuring “It’s okay,” into her hair until she begins to calm.

“I’m sorry,” she rasps out, her voice mangled by emotion. “I just—please, Will, I just want to forget, I’ve tried to remember that I’m here but I need to forget the rest. I didn’t think it would affect me this much but then Maggie kept calling, and I could hear the fear in her voice and there was no information I could give her and it was just like—”

“Okay,” he murmurs again, brushing his fingers over her cheeks when she finally lowers her hands, doing his best to wipe her tears. “Maggie’s in her hotel room, she’s safe now.”

He feels Mac nod against his chest, and she drapes one of her legs over his hip.

“I know she is,” she says, voice strained. “I just—I just—and it’s not just that it’s everything—”

“I know,” Will interrupts, stroking her hair without ceasing. It’s soft under his fingers, the motion calming him as much as he hopes its calming her—because now his heart is pounding as he runs through what Mac has told him about her time as an embed, and he’s suddenly and startlingly aware of all the gaps in her storytelling. All that he knows is what was relevant to Jerry’s lawsuit. “I’m sorry, I should have realized,” he says, and kisses the top of her head. “You don’t have to explain.”

Exhaling unevenly, she lifts her head to look at him.

“Can we just keep—” Sighing, she stops, and wraps her arms around his shoulders. “I need you,” she says more plaintively, but manages to keep herself on an even keel even if there are tears still flowing from her eyes.

“I love you,” he says, and by the time she’s repeating it back to him he’s moving pillows off the bed and to the floor, pulling back the covers, and maneuvering them to lie underneath them. It’s April, and all the windows in his apartment mean nothing for heat retention.

Mac’s eyes, glassy and red and swollen, blink up at him from where her head rests on her pillow when he positions himself in the cradle of her legs. He starts up again slowly, testing angles and strokes, until he finds the one that makes her clench her nails into his biceps.

Again, and again, seconds flitting past.

Mac reaches up behind her to grip the headboard, bearing down against his movements, low moans stirring deep in her throat. She shivers each time he pushes into her, the ridge of his pubic bone riding along her clit, and he watches as Mac tries to keep her eyes open.

It’s wet, almost frictionless, the sound of the suction of their hips meeting and parting filling the room. The lovebites that he left earlier have blossomed along her collarbones and up the carved lines of her neck, and color rises on her cheeks as he pushes her higher and higher.

Murmuring his name over and over again, she arches towards him. The minutes tick by faster, marked by sweat slipping between their bodies and MacKenzie’s moans and his own answering grunts and half-formed words. Faster, harder, each thrust reverberating through their bodies, arousal echoing louder and louder between them.

Both breathing heavily, the tempo increases, heat flaring between them. She looks up at him, hazel eyes darkened by pupils blasted wide with lust, brown hair spilling onto the pillow. Mac reaches up and combs his own hair back from where it’s fallen over his forehead, skirting her fingers through his hair to the back of his neck, pulling him down for a kiss.

Dropping down onto his elbows, he brackets her head with his forearms before pressing his lips to hers, moving faster and harder still, challenging her to keep up, keep breathing, even as his tongue parts her lips and slides against hers.

One hand tightening in his hair, the other skating, shakily, down to the small of his back, nails curling in against his skin, she complies, and his thoughts began to scatter, revealing baser needs to feel—the coiling muscle of her abdomen against his, her skin under his hands, her hair between his fingers, her lithe form shuddering powerfully as he moves between her legs, his tongue in her mouth.

He sets to the task of overwhelming her— _please, Will, I just want to forget, I’ve tried to remember that I’m here but I need to forget the rest_ —and only pulls back from her mouth when the legs wrapped around his waist begin to tremble. She looks up at him, eyes wide and helpless, ragged cries (high and tight and the kind that tell him that she’s almost there) escaping of their own volition though her parted lips.

_Not good enough._

Lifting himself up higher on his knees, he pushes one of her legs off him, pinning it wide. Her fingernails bite into his back and he grinds their hips together, flexing inside her, making her muscles clench down on his erection. Whimpering, she bares her neck to him, uses the one leg still wrapped around him to lever herself sharply against him.

She keeps with him until his rhythm picks up to a more terminal pace, until all she can do is hold fast to him. He turns his face to kiss her cheek, the tears trickling from the corners of her eyes.

He keeps her there, at the edge of release, until the _yes’s_ leaving her lips devolve into dry sobs and she began to shake under him at the exertion. Her fingernails tear into him, her hands scrabbling from his back to his arms to his shoulders. Biting her lower lip, her eyes keep on his the entire time as she tries to give as good as he is, and just… _fuck._

 _God, she’s beautiful,_ Will thinks, and tells her, over and over pressing open-mouthed kisses along her jawline, feeling his own climax imminent, the muscles in his lower back and thighs beginning to lock up and he buries his face in her hair.

Rambling incoherent streams of words in between his uneven breaths, he feels her bite down on his shoulder, screaming in pleasured agony.

"That’s it," he manages to get out, trying not to come before her. "God, MacKenzie."

Letting go of the leg pinned to the mattress, he slides a hand between them, his thumb rubbing wide circles over the bundle of nerves at the apex of her folds. “That’s it.”

She doesn’t shake apart—she’s too far gone for that, he thinks.

Stuttering out _“f-fuck"_ her body slackens for a moment, before tightening her limbs around him, and, knees pressing in almost painfully into his sides, MacKenzie throws her head back, sobbing in relief. Jerking his hips into hers, her breasts pressed against his chest and satisfied cries in his ear, he has no choice left but to follow.

 

* * *

 

“Feeling any better?” he asks, sitting back down on their bed. They’ve showered, and dressed, and now Mac is sitting up against her pillows, under the covers with another blanket draped over her shoulders as she intently types something out on her laptop.

Upon closer inspection, he sees that she’s replying to an email from Maggie.

“Last one for the night, I promise,” she says when she catches him reading over her shoulder. “I told her to sleep in tomorrow and if she checks in before noon she’s in trouble.”

And with that, she hits send, closes the lid on her computer, and moves it to her nightstand.

Which is when he hands her a mug of tea and a plate of eggs and toast. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he pulls her to lean against him, careful of the plate now balanced in her lap. She droops against him.

Dropping her head back onto his shoulder she murmurs her thanks, and Will mentally debates turning on the television to a station that won’t be covering Tsarnev’s arrest. It’s still early. For them, anyway, just past midnight, and even if they’re exhausted he knows that Mac is too anxious to sleep.

“Feeling any better?” he asks again, not letting her deflect.

Blowing over the rim of the mug, she nods. He won’t ask her if she’s okay. At this point he figures that asking her if she’s okay would be insulting, but _better_ is a good place to start.

“Calmer, at least,” she says, voice raspy and tired, and she sounds very much like she just wants to do nothing but pass the rest of the night in relative silence, so Will reaches for the remote and turns on the next episode of whatever’s currently in their Netflix queue.

They’ll talk later.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
